


Never Die

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Post EPIX Trailer Speculation Abound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 06:42:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18493504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise? I thought not. It’s not a story the Jedi would tell you.





	Never Die

**Author's Note:**

> Written for avamarga as a gift for her art that you can find [here](https://twitter.com/avamarga_/status/1096782935359840256) as a part of the [Reylo Gifts Project](https://twitter.com/ReyloGifts). Thanks to aionimica for taking a look at this before I posted!

The snake’s voice rings in her ears.  “There. Are you happy now?”

She looks up.  His eyes are yellow, his face is crinkled, crunched, and pale, his hand rests on the saber that had once belonged to Anakin Skywalker.  His laughter rings in her head as she clutches Ben’s body to her chest. 

“And you wanted to save him,” he sneers down at her.  “But instead, he’s dead. And now, you will die as well.”

He raises his hands and somehow the lightning doesn’t hurt when it strikes her.  It had been far worse in Snoke’s red room, when her heart had been on fire with determination.  Now, she just feels empty—a shell, as dried and dead as Jakku.

_ And between it all, a balance. _

_ Don’t listen to him,  _ comes a voice she’s never heard before.  The lightning flows through the ghost standing before her, a young man with a scar across his right eye, just like Ben.  She hasn’t seen him before, but he’s standing there in Jedi robes looking at her steadily.  _ He’s a liar.   _

“You’re a liar,” Rey says to the Sith Lord and the lightning stops. 

“Oh?” he asks.  “Do you see life in his body?  His heart has stopped. His blood is drenching his corpse.”  Rey can’t look at it. It hurts too much. “Do you think that is life?  Look at him. What do you see?”

Rey looks at him and she sees—

_ You’re not alone. _

—He looks at peace, finally.  She’s never seen him look so relaxed.  Perhaps death was a gift for him.  _ Ben, you’re breaking my heart. _

Darth Sidious laughs.  

Rage fills her.

“Good,” he says.  “Good. Ben Solo was weak.  You, though.”

“I’m going to die,” Rey says, squaring her shoulders.  “You just said.”

“There is another way.  You could join me.”

_ Don’t listen to him,  _ says the same ghost, more determined this time.   _ Don’t _ .

“I’ll never join you,” she replies.  “You’ll have to kill me.”

“Then die.”

It’s a funny thing.  Rey has spent all her life surviving, fighting to keep herself alive.  Ever since she was the little scrap of a girl, she’d fought and fought and fought.  

She doesn’t fight now.  She lets death come for her the way it came for Ben, electricity crackling through her veins, trying to stop her heart.

_ Death and decay that brings new life. _

_ Rey—what are you doing?  _ she can practically hear Luke shout, and then another memory—not her own as consciousness fades.

_ Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise? I thought not. It’s not a story the Jedi would tell you. It’s a Sith legend. Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create life… He had such a knowledge of the dark side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying. The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. He became so powerful… the only thing he was afraid of was losing his power, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew, then his apprentice killed him in his sleep. Ironic. He could save others from death, but not himself. _

Midi-whatnows?

_ Pay attention,  _ comes the man’s voice again.   _ I’m giving you everything. _

What?

She can’t feel her body anymore, she can’t feel anything anymore.  Her teeth are sparking, her eyes are open and closed at once, her lips had once uttered—

_ Neither are you. _

—and Ben’s dead.

Dead, dead dead.

_ I won’t lose you, Padmé. _

That was his voice again.  The strange Jedi she hadn’t spoken to before.

Why did he want her to pay attention.  Was there something she is supposed to know now, something about her own death that’s...that’s...

_ He had such a knowledge of the dark side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying. _

If there is one thing that Rey understands about the Force, it is that it is as impenetrable as the ocean.  It is heavy and deep, and it crashes over you and you might drown or you might float. She is a vessel for the Force, and the Force is a vessel for her.  And sometimes you wait to understand, but sometimes—

The Jedi’s words come back to her and she remembers that thought—what about bringing them back to life?

She doesn’t raise her hand to deflect the lightning, to catch it and throw it back at the creator.

Oh no. 

She does what Ben did in Snoke’s throne room—one quick turn of the saber, igniting it into her  _ true _ enemy and suddenly the lightning just stops.  

The lightning stops, the life force of the man in the throne stops, but the electricity doesn’t stop.  She can  _ feel _ the Force, can reach out and feel it, not like when Luke tricked her with the seagrass.  She is the Force and the Force is her.

And the Force carries her to Ben, takes her to her knees and she lugs him into her arms, her hands pressed to his bleeding heart.  

_ You must control your feelings,  _ one of the masters had told her while she’d trained.  Ben hadn’t thought so much of that. 

Her feelings were part of the Force, after all so were his.

He died protecting her.  Her enemy, her beloved. 

_ The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. _

_ You went straight to the Dark.  You didn’t even fight it. _

So she sinks.

She sinks into that cave again, she sees herself stretched out a thousandfold, iteration upon iteration, version upon version searching for the one that reached for Ben’s hand and saw a future with him, her lips to his, her heart to his, their breath mixing in the twilight.  She dances through the Force, twists and flips up onto his TIE Silencer, ducking under a cut as they’d trained, feeling the heat of his saber a little less warmly than the heat of his heart. And yet she is perfectly still.

“I don’t know what midi-chlorians are,” she says to nothing.

_ You don’t have to,  _ replies the stranger.   _ Feel what you must.  You can do it.  _

“I don’t even know what I’m doing,” she chokes out.

_ That is why you can.  Feel your way. You are more than you know, Rey. _

She bends her head and presses her forehead to Ben’s and squeezes her eyes shut.  It doesn’t keep the tears from flowing, but she likes to think it helps center her.

She feels a breeze in a breezeless room.

She hears the thumping of her own heart in her throat.

She remembers what it felt like to touch Ben through space and time.

_ Balance. _

_ Life, death, decay, life. _

_ Life, decay, death, life. _

It feels unnatural to break that cycle—like the rain falling up to the sky, like a mother willingly abandoning her child.  

_ Kill him,  _ Sidious had demanded and she’d refused.

_ Kill her,  _ and Ben had too.  

_ Live him.  _ The words feel absurd in her mind, but she repeats them again and again, fixating on it, sending that same flow she’d felt while the lightning had struck her back into his body.

_ Live him.  Live him. Live him.  Live him.  _ The rhythm of a heartbeat that’s not her own.

His hands twitch, his lungs begin to heave and Rey throws whatever Force she can into his wound and heals it as fast as she can.  “Ben,” she sobs. “Ben, Ben, Ben...”

“Rey.”  His voice is dry, rasping through a cracked throat and when his eyes open, they are unfocused, dazed.  She kisses his forehead, his cheek, his lips and in that moment, she knows she’ll never let him go. Not ever, not as long as she lives.   _ Never die, _ she begs him silently with her mouth to his.

His arms tighten around her, and he pulls her closer to his chest.  His coat is covered in blood, but his heart is racing, sending sweet life through him, more and more by the second.

“How did you—” he asks between kisses.

“I don’t know,” she says.  “I don’t care. I just care that you’re—”

He swallows her words, drinks them down, breathes her in until they’re both breathless.

He laughs into her mouth—triumphant and beautiful.  She has never seen him smile before and never wants him to stop as he rests his forehead against hers and clutches her arms.

Only then does he glance towards Palpatine’s severed body on the throne.

“Learned from the best,” she jokes to him, fiddling with the front of his jacket.

Ben twitches a finger and something ignites around the Sith Lord’s body, and Rey knows it won’t be long before the thing burns to a crisp.  Then, he turns back to look at her, but his eyes slide up and beyond her, as though he’s looking at...

The man is still standing there, smiling down at them.  He looks proud. He looks just as triumphant as Ben had a moment before.  And it hits her, suddenly, who he is, why he is here, why he was helping her, that he had wanted her—needed her—to save his grandson’s life.  

She doesn’t know what to say.  She doesn’t think there are words she could say.

And as she opens her mouth to try, he says simply, “You finished what I started,” and vanishes.

Ben swallows, his eyes suddenly bright, and he looks down at Rey and whispers to her, “No.   _ We _ finished it.” His hand finds hers and squeezes. Her lips find his and sighs.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! You can find me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/crossing_winter) and [pillowfort](http://pillowfort.io/crossingwinter)!


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